20th Anniversary Reddit AMA

Ninja plays on a private server, and most of his followers are there for Fortnite and immediately stop watching when he starts playing it.

There are three types of potential subscribers out there...

1. Those who don't know it exists. FFXI hasn't been advertised outside of its own bubble in 10 years. Up until XIV's recent surge in popularity, the only MMORPG anyone talked about was WoW.

2. Those who think it's in maintenance mode. I believe it was around 2015 that the game "ended". A lot of people rightfully stopped playing. But it came back, and only a small bubble of players know it did. Even if XI shows up on XIV's launcher, it's still almost universally known as being in maintenance mode. Nearly any time I mention that I play XI, the response is a puzzled "Why would you play an online game with no updates?"

3. Those who think it's an antiquated XIV. It's not. XIV is the epitome of quality-of-life and accessibility. That's great- it appeals to a massive audience. But not everybody wants that. Some people want the openness and flexibility offered by an older MMORPG. A lot of people think of it as playing like XIV 1.0, and I hear a lot of folks ask why anybody is playing XI when ARR is already out.

Nobody wants to be upset but Yoshida can do better than this, he is in charge of finances and he can increase the budget so we can have a little more than this. Don't expect miracles but this is bare minimum.

If they had at the very least showed off the new zone to some degree, or the new weapons (which are going to end up just being relics painted black) or something it would of helped. They showed nothing, it's infuriating.

I find that hard to believe when wings was a... 5? 7? year expansion storyline that ended sometime around abyssea, by comparison VR seems to be proceeding pretty steadily.

I don't think budget increase is magically going to yield more content or bigger changes. Say they increase budget, what do they do with that? Who is going to want to come get hired to work on a title that uses 22 year old hardware and built up using arbitraty code practices that don't make sense in the modern world.

Comparing this to my career field, I don't know anyone who is looking to dive into on-prem AD enviornments when everything is working in the cloud and using well established names such as Sailpoint to drive their governance.

FFXI isn't a good intern project to pull people in on either, its going to require someone who has a specific background to even have a shot at producing something useful and not just come in for 6 months, hate every minute of it and leave and have zero turn around on that employee.

I wish you luck in finding this mythical group of people who have spent the last 10 years looking for a hardcore MMO and still have not found this one. There are tens of them out there, I’m sure. Your other two groups of people aren’t potential subscribers because they’ve made their minds up.



Yoshida is a salesman that overpromises and underdelivers, I have no problem saying that. He’s done enough harm with the handling of some things on the XIV side.

He’s not stupid, however. How much time and effort would it take to smooth out the pre-RoV era part of this game? To get players to a place where they won’t get stomped by even easy regular ambuscade. Without outside help from an established player, I’d say it’s nigh impossible with the way we’re set up now. How would he go about fixing this without infuriating current players by wasting resources on stuff they completed over a decade ago?

You can’t hope for a resurgence (hehe) of this game without new players coming in and they’re not biting or staying on the hook. All we get are grizzled vets that come back, try some “new” stuff, and leave. That needs to be fixed before the game proves that it’s a worthwhile investment for an expansion and the increased personnel it calls for.

NOOOOOOO THAT NUMBER ISN'T TRUE

Yea its nice to make up numbers

A lot of people don't know what they like until they've played it. WoW and now XIV are sort of the poster children for MMORPGs. That's why categorizing games under such a broad genre is crappy. If your only experience playing an MMORPG was WoW or XIV, you'll only know those as what an MMORPG can be. If they didn't like what those games offered, they probably wouldn't have even reached out to try another.

Never underestimate the power of marketing. If people still judged XIV based on its original release, it would be in the exact same boat. But it got better, and then it was given proper treatment.

Where would you have them market?

How would you have them market?

I’m not being snide or anything, I’m just really curious what kind of effective marketing campaign can be done at this point?

XVI is going to be their next mainline marketing push. How would you suggest they put both out there at the same time?

Isn't it better if you posted your source?

I say FFXI has 10 million players, now that I have posted this it's online and now proof. Which is just as accurate as whatever bumhole you pulled yours from.

btw I know where you pulled it form and lol@you

I mean, just off the top of my head, they could bring back the dual subscription service. They could maybe have both (or all three) of their existing MMOs up on the same bulletin boards that inform people of updates and such. That would all be virtually free.

If they wanted to take it a few steps further, I know people complain about the XIV launcher in addition to PlayOnline. They might be able to remove both and combine them in the same launcher, which would go really well with a dual subscription service.

When people quit XIV, it gives them a survey. What if they tweaked some of the potential answers to things that XI does better, and if those are selected they could push players in that direction. Even just saying "Sorry to see you go. If XIV wasn't for you, why not try our other MMORPG!"

80k of that is bots obviously.

Worst thing that happened for players of both games was Yoshida being put on the board of directors, his entire focus changed on that day.

FFXI isn't going to get anything larger than what we get now because SE has no incentive to pursue it. If they did, they would. This isn't rocket science, why are we still talking about this?

Stages of grief I guess, why it took to the 20th anni. I have no idea

We're just salty that they aren't, and ranting into the wind about it.

We're a group of people on the internet all looking for that sweet, sweet affirmation.

I disagree, but I’m not pursuing it here. We are not going to see eye to eye on this.


I agree with the bundled subscription, but that’s it.

You are not uncoupling POL from XI and god help the servers if they shove XIV in there.

If they don’t redirect you to XIV after canceling your sub on XI, why would they do the opposite? Or would it go both ways?

I wonder what the peak active subs have been. I thought I read once that FFXI was 500k at one point, but I think the consensus is more like 300-350k.

At this rate, FFXI barely even has a free trial. Them adding a survey at the end of XI asking how they could improve would be an improvement itself. I'd be OK with it if it went both ways, but I also don't know how necessary it would be given how much other marketing they've done for XIV.

Anywhere I can't ad-block into oblivion shows me ads for it lol

I dunno. I'm just saying the rate of return would probably be worth it for them. Everyone already knows XIV exists. They're probably barely even seeing a return on that investment now. It probably costs them a quarter million USD per new player at this rate. But FFXI's population could be doubled for free, or tripled for a small investment.

You say that, but an updated client with slightly better UI, slightly better server performance, and slightly more functional equipsets would go a long way towards making the experience more friendly to new players.

And if it's more friendly to new players and less clunky overall, it's a much easier sell to streamers. Streamers prop up MMOs today. There's a reason XIV blew up right before endwalker. Because WoW ***the bed so hard that all their biggest streamers/community members jumped ship.

Every MMO goes through lull periods and the flavor of the month shifts constantly. It would be far better for SE in general if they were able to convert more people into the Final Fantasy universe instead of just XIV. XI is a game with 20 years of content and there's a ton of fun for new players to have with some of the best FF stories that exist. There's also a lot of opportunity for community events.

Or i guess any ffxi fans should just roll over and die. Like of course we are going to want more ***for the game we pay to play. These free campaign/trolls are the worst.

go back to mommy

There’s a way to have this conversation without jumping to this extreme. Everyone here likes the game or why else would they even bother replying?

Over 20 years of this game, no one has been 100% in agreement on the directions it took. Why must everyone be in lockstep today over needing an expansion, new jobs, marketing campaign, removal of Yoshida for some reason, etc.

We can 100% all agree that Cornelia should be forever :)

It's panic. We just had a milestone date without a single clue as to what's ahead. People are worried that as the population declines, we're getting closer and closer to the game shutting down.

Square-Enix could invest a small amount of money to keep this game going strong. There's countless ways they could do it. But even at this crazy milestone of 20 years, our only acknowledgement was from a fast food restaurant.